1860's Home Makeover - Mequon, WI Part 2

We’re here at a residence in west Mequon Wisconsin where we are doing a whole home makeover project. As you can see were are in the middle of the construction process now, and looking at some of the features of the project. This is an 1860’s farmhouse, one of the oldest homes in the area, definitely an Ozaukee county original settler. Of course many years have passed and we are in the process of updating the original home. The current owner really wants to maintain the character of the existing house. There is a lot of charm and character in the existing building, but not a lot of modern conveniences. We are at the framing stages of the project, and getting into the mechanical stages which are not quite yet completed. You can really get a flavor for the process that we have to go through when we take an old home, particularly one of this vintage and try to “marry” new material to the existing. The original framing is a totally different technique then how we build today, as you can see we have to combine new framing members with old. What you are seeing here is what will eventually be the wall going up to the new ceiling which is much higher than the existing in the original house. So this is a really good example of the process of constructing an addition onto a very old building. The second floor of the original home consisted of just two bedrooms and of course the need for the new master bathroom in this space was driven by the fact that there was no indoor plumbing in the original home. We’re putting a new bathroom in this space to make it very functional for the current owners. As we progress we will be adding more space to the house, and in future blogs we will look at those as we go.